“We really want this”: World’s Richest Franchise Desperately Wanted Leonardo DiCaprio in Lead Role
Pokémon wanted to cast Leonardo DiCaprio for the role of Ash Ketchum in their first movie.
Since the beginning of his acting career, Leonardo DiCaprio has been ruling the Hollywood Industry as one of the best and most versatile actors.
Almost the entire world knows about him and his work and it is a dream for many actors, directors, and any person related to the industry to work with the actor.
Several honors have been bestowed upon him, such as three Golden Globes, an Academy Award, and a British Academy Film Award.
In an Empire readers’ poll from 2022, DiCaprio was selected as one of the top 50 actors of all time. His work is indisputable, as his exceptional acting abilities have been demonstrated on numerous occasions.
Leonardo DiCaprio
Even the world’s richest franchise, Pokémon, also wanted to cast DiCaprio as the lead role for one of the movies of the series, Pokémon: The First Movie. The franchise wanted to cast the Titanic actor for the Voice acting role of Ash Ketchum, the protagonist of the entire franchise, but circumstances didn’t allow it.
Pokémon Franchise Wanted to Cast Leonardo DiCaprio
As reported by CBR, during a Spotify podcast by host Alex Pappademas, he explained how during the height of the Pokémon craze, 4Kids, and Norman Grossfeld, the producer for the English language version of Pokémon: The First Movie, were looking for the cast of the movie, and one of the representatives suggested the name of Leonardo DiCaprio. Pappademas stated:
“He said, ‘Hey, we want this. We can make this work. We’re going to bring in Leonardo DiCaprio to play the voice of Ash,” Grossfeld said. “‘It’s going to get a lot of buzz, we’re going to have a lot and we’ll get all these celebrities. It’s going to be big.’”
Pappademas explained that Grossfeld knew that casting DiCaprio would truly be a very big feat for the movie and it would attract a lot of attention from all over the industry. He also explained the reason given by Grossfeld for dropping the idea of casting DiCaprio in the movie.
Norman Grossfeld Rejected The Casting of Leonardo DiCaprio
Pappademas during his podcast also explained that Grossfeld was against the idea of casting DiCaprio because of many reasons.
One of which was that he did not want to change the original voice of the main character Ash as it would be weird for the kids who grew accustomed to his original voice. He said:
“Whether he [DiCaprio] could have been enticed to play Ash in this movie is unclear, but either way it wouldn’t have mattered because Norman says he said no to DiCaprio in that meeting. Because, as Norman saw it, having somebody else do the voice would have been weird for the kids who’d grown accustomed to Ash sounding the way he did in the show.”
Leonardo DiCaprio
Grossfeld also stated that casting DiCaprio would have taken away the attention from the movie and would have reduced the impact of the movie which would not have been good for the overall success of Pokémon.
